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Kadoo: Just one place to manage, store and selectively share digital content

Kadoo (www.kadoo.com) is the all-in-one site for storing, managing and selectively sharing consumers' digital content. It provides users a single, easy-to-use interface for managing web applications such as email and contacts and also for social networking functions such as tagging and sharing.

Kadoo provides users 10 GB of storage for digital content such as photos, files and videos. All of this content is instantly accessible, instantly sharable and instantly available to each of Kadoo's other applications.

Selective sharing puts users in control

Having all of a user's digital content in just one place makes it easier to manage and share that content. Kadoo allows users to share broadly if they want, and also to share selectively with just the family or friends they want.

Kadoo's selective sharing controls extend beyond content to also include experience, look and feel. For instance, a user's business contacts may see a business-oriented profile on Kadoo; family members may see a very different profile. In all cases the Kadoo user is in control of who sees what.

Kadoo content can be shared with other Kadoo members, with people outside the Kadoo community and even members of Facebook, the Blackboard educational community and other networks.

The downside of sharing personal info

The growth of personal web publishing has resulted in the sharing of more content between more people than ever before. And that can be a good thing. Yet it has also made it increasingly difficult and time consuming to manage that content across an increasing number of video, photo, tag, bookmarked and other sites. And it's contributed to a growing problem: the ability to manage 'who sees what' has not kept pace with consumers' use of sharing sites.

It's one thing to share a video with the entire planet on YouTube or another video sharing site. It's quite another to share private photos or other content with just family or close friends.

Kadoo solves this problem by putting users in control with selective sharing. Selective sharing enables them to determine who of their friends, family, colleagues and others, both within and outside of Kadoo, see which information and content.

Kadoo even extends the concept of selective sharing to the experience, look and feel of its pages. For instance, a Kadoo user's business contact could see a business-oriented profile and content. The same user's family could see a completely different profile and content.

Personal media rather than mass media

Kadoo's selective sharing controls allow users to engage more deeply with just the people they choose. This is very different from social sites or video sharing platforms, which require a user to default to a lowest common denominator mind set — only sharing content that is okay for everyone to see, regardless of whether they are friends, colleagues or even know the user at all.

Technology optimized for sharing

The Kadoo technology platform is optimized to manage large volumes of content with no degradation of the user experience and no latency. The Kadoo Share Mail application, a type of email integrated across Kadoo, enables the easy sharing of large files typically too large to send as email attachments.

Integration with Blackboard = access to 20 million students

Kadoo integrates with Blackboard (NASDAQ:BBBB), the leading education technology platform currently in use by more than 20 million students on some 3000 campuses in 70 countries. Many of these students will see Kadoo as one of the tab options on the same Blackboard web page they visit each day to check on homework assignments and to communicate with instructors.

Kadoo co-founder, Dan Cane, is also a founder of Blackboard. Christopher Etesse, is the CEO of Kadoo and a former senior executive of Blackboard.

Kadoo is free to everyone

Kadoo is freely available to everyone. The company expects early adopters to include young parents, families and students, among others. The company's relationship with Blackboard represents an attractive marketing opportunity that is expected to provide an early critical mass of users.

Kadoo debuts the public beta of its site at the DEMOFall 08 conference on September 8. Its service is freely available to everyone.

Experienced management team

Christopher Etesse, CEO, was previously the vice president of product development and operations for Monster.com. Prior to Monster, Mr. Etesse was the vice president of international services at Blackboard. Previously, Mr. Etesse worked in eLearning initiatives for the Thompson Publishing Corporation. He holds a masters in computer science from the University of Kentucky.

Dan Cane, CTO, was a founder of Blackboard, where he was vice president of research and development and a member of Blackboard's board of directors. Mr. Cane was the lead developer behind the first eLearning systems at the core of the Blackboard platform. He developed the Blackboard Content System, and was the key driver behind its cornerstone patents. Mr. Cane has a BA in applied economics from Cornell.

The company

Kadoo is based in Washington, DC, with offices in Delray Beach, FL. The company is backed by private investors.

For more information contact:

Sue Ellen Schaming    pr@kadooinc.com or 415-722-8583